


Heat wave

by Evil_Keshi



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Meetings, Fluff, Jonmund Week, M/M, Tormund's Daughters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 04:33:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19986163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evil_Keshi/pseuds/Evil_Keshi
Summary: A day at the lake with his daughters, a (too) bright sun and a cute lifeguard. Maybe, Tormund thought, the heat wave wasn't so bad after all.Written for Jonmund Week 2019.





	Heat wave

**Author's Note:**

> As soon as I heard about the Jonmund Week, I knew I had to write something for it so here we are! The Friday prompt is Alternate Universe so here, have lifeguard!Jon and single dad!Tormund. I hope you'll enjoy your reading and who knows, perhaps this will give you a feeling of freshness during these super hot days in Europe. Don't forget to drink water :)

  


Tormund couldn't remember living a summer as hot as this one. Back in Iceland, the temperatures never rose above 25°C in July - and that was a record, really: more often than not, they remained around 12°C at most and that was absolute perfection. On the opposite side of the sea, where he'd followed the first love of his life to, London was slightly different.

Of course, the days were sunnier, no matter how much British people kept complaining that the sky was always grey and ready to unleash gallons of rain upon their heads. Ah! They'd never faced -25°C with snow up to mid-thighs in Northern Iceland, they'd never seen the sea freeze between fjords, had never felt like the sky was actually falling on their heads when night came upon them without warning. Weak people.

Right now, however, Tormund didn't feel strong at all. He was dying. Far from the usual and average 20°C the city welcomed in summer, the temperatures had skyrocketed and he was pretty sure he could crack an egg open and let it turn into an omelette on the hood of his car. The heat wave had hit them as well as the continent a few days ago and the temperatures had slowly risen, until they'd reached new heights that morning, when even preparing breakfast made him sweat buckets. His fragile skin was red all over, horribly contrasting with his beard and hair thanks to the walk to the park he'd taken with his daughters the previous day, hoping to get some fresher air beneath the trees... It hadn't quite worked out. Today, he had thus decided to take the girls out of London to a lake where they could swim.

The water felt cool on his feet when he walked into the lake until his ankles were submerged, a welcome sensation after the short but too damn hot drive: his t-shirt was soaked by the time he and the girls made it from the car park to the lake. The grassy banks had yellowed under the harsh sunbeams and the small sandy area that could have passed as a beach if they'd stood by the sea had burned the soles of their feet when they'd taken off their shoes.

"Calm down," he told his girls when they started to splash each other while he put down their isothermal bag with their bottles and sandwiches away from the water, "Sunscreen before the fun, loves."

Ailin scrunched her nose in disgust when her father squeezed a large amount of sunscreen on her arms and rubbed the lotion down to the tips of her fingers and up to her neck, while Vanja laughed at her little sister and grabbed the tube from her father's hand to apply sunscreen to her legs.

"It's sticky, daddy!" Ailin pouted.

"You'll thank me in twenty years," he shot back with a grin, booping her nose with a drop of sunscreen. "So, do you have everything? Hats?"

"On!" Ailin and Vanja exclaimed together, screwing their hats on their heads.

"Sunglasses?"

"On!"

"Do you dive into the lake headfirst?"

"No, first we splash our legs and shoulders," Vanja answered and then, anticipating her father's questions, she added, "We have to come back often to drink water, we can't stay too long under the sun and if we have a problem..."

"We scream!" Ailin finished.

"Yes," Tormund mumbled, aware that his daughters had heard these very same recommendations from their mother often enough to remember them all by now - it was their second summer without her, though... and repeating them wouldn't hurt. "You've seen the lifeguards? They're right there."

Tormund pointed at a man and a woman dressed in the official swimming trunks and t-shirt all lifeguards wore to be recognisable at once. The former had hair as dark as the latter's was a flamboyant red and they were both scanning the waters, on the lookout for any sign of distress coming from the people already swimming in the lake - young or old adults, children and teenagers, almost no one had wanted to stay on the banks. No one except for a few people reading books on their towels beneath parasols, a dog that was apparently keeping its masters' belongings safe and Tormund, who made sure that his daughters properly wetted their upper and lower body before allowing them into the water.

"Don't go too far!" he yelled at them when they ran off, hats and glasses on, waterproof sunscreen still shining on their shoulders. "I must be able to see you at all times!"

He watched them like a mother hen her chicks, checking that they weren't straying away from the authorised swimming area, limited to the part that was deep enough to enable people to actually swim but shallow enough to avoid serious accidents. He only opened the book he'd brought along when he caught the girls playing with other kids who looked to be around their ages, throwing and catching a ball in a sort of clumsy match of water polo.

He looked up from his book quite often, worried at the prospect of missing the first hints of a potentially dangerous situation but he was reassured at the sight of the two lifeguards, splitting their duo to watch the groups of kids scattered around the lake better. Tormund lifted an appreciative eyebrow at the man when he gathered his curly hair into a bun at the back of his head, his t-shirt rising to reveal two subtle dimples on his lower back. He glanced back down at his book before the lifeguard could turn around and think that he was a nasty creep staring at his arse - and he was neither a creep nor looking at his backside, so... There.

Tormund focused on his book with renewed fervour, trying to ignore the fine specimen of mankind standing in front of him - though that was harder to achieve than he imagined, since the women a few meters away from him suddenly started to giggle behind their books. Following the line of their eyes, he realised that they, too, had noticed the lifeguard's fine features, although they were ogling his rear rather than his upper body. Alright, fine, the red shorts did nothing to hide the firmness of these cheeks and...

Tormund flushed and hid behind his book when the young man bent down to talk to a kid in the water, while the women next to him let out excited whispers. At least _he_ was somewhat discreet... His attention snapped back to the lake when he heard his youngest daughter's voice, screaming after her sister.

"Vanja!" she was yelling, "Daddy said we couldn't go too far!"

Tormund's heart fell down to his stomach like a stone to the bottom of a lake when he saw Vanja, swimming in pursuit of the ball the kids had been playing with and had obviously thrown too far away. He jumped to his feet, not bothering to place a bookmark in his book as he dropped it in haste, and he quickly made his way to the damp sand, where water and land met.

"Vanja!" he called, his voice louder than Ailin's squeaks, "Vanja, come back!"

She apparently didn't even hear him, because she didn't turn back but kept going after the ball. There was little to no current at all in the lake and the ball wouldn't go far but still Tormund grew worried, because Vanja was swimming in deep waters and what if she tired too quickly to come back where she could stand? What if she went under?

"Sir?" someone called softly next to him.

Tormund startled and briefly glanced to his right, unwilling to take his eyes off of his daughter for too long, but then he did a double take. The dark-haired lifeguard he'd been watching minutes ago was standing next to him, his long lashes fluttering as he looked between Tormund and his girl, his plump lips opening around a question.

"Do you want me to get her?" he asked, "She seems to be doing fine but I can stay by her side until she's back in shallow waters, just to make sure she stays out of trouble."

"I... Yes, please," he stammered, relief punching the air out of his lungs, "Thank you."

The lifeguard nodded and took off his t-shirt without saying another word and then, he entered the lake and broke into a fast crawl, joining Vanja in a few seconds. Tormund picked up the t-shirt the young man had let fall into the sand, just to keep his hands busy instead of tearing at his hair. Distracted, his eyes set on his daughter and the lifeguard swimming next to her, he shook the fabric from side to side in order to get rid of the sticky sand, catching the name of the man embroidered into it. He didn't call for Vanja anymore, too scared of making her panic if she saw _him_ freak out, but the few minutes she and the lifeguard - _Jon_ , according to the t-shirt - needed to make it back to the small beach felt like an eternity to him.

"Are you okay, sweetheart?" he asked when she came out of the water, falling to his knees and cupping her face to examine her.

"Yes, daddy," she said with a roll of her eyes, "I just had to catch the ball... Can I go back?"

"Stay close this time," he enjoined her, although he reckoned he ended up sounding like he was begging instead.

She nodded, kissed his cheek, and jumped back into the lake to run with the ball toward her sister and their new friends. By his side, Jon chuckled.

"I'm sorry I panicked," Tormund apologised to the young man, "She was doing okay, I'm sure you have better things to do than this..."

"Better be safe than sorry," the lifeguard answered with a gentle smile, running his hand through his hair and looking nonplussed when he realised that he'd lost his hair tie when he dove. "You are right to be cautious. Many kids think they're fine until their legs or their arms start cramping up."

"Yeah," Tormund agreed, glancing to his girls before he closed his eyes for a few seconds, allowing relief to wash over him and take away the tension in his shoulders. "Thank you, really. I don't know what I would have done without you if there had been real trouble. I... Well, I can't swim."

"Scared of the water?" the young man asked, a smile still in place but no trace of mockery in his eyes.

"Never learned," Tormund corrected, shaking his head as he thought of the freezing waters in Iceland. "My daughters used to come here with their mother - a real siren, she was - but after her passing, I tried not to be a general failure at parenting and got so busy I never took the time to learn. Anyway... This is yours, I think... Jon?"

He handed him the t-shirt, which the young man accepted with a grateful smile and eyes that suddenly shone a bit brighter, betraying what Tormund didn't think he imagined was a shy interest. Oh, that was too good to be true, wasn't it?

"Yes, that's me," Jon said, "and you are...?"

"Tormund," the redhead answered - and perhaps now was the time to say something smart or witty but definitively charming to this cute man... but his gaze stayed stuck on Jon's fingers, curled around the fabric of his shirt and pressed against his chest where several scars were visible, slightly darker than the rest of his skin and shaped like crescents.

When he realised that he was staring, Tormund paled and looked up, an apology on the tip of his tongue, ready to blurt out that he wasn't usually that much of an arsehole, but the young man was quicker.

"Sharks," Jon told him before he could say anything.

"What?" Tormund exclaimed, his eyes going wide with horror before he noticed that the young man was biting his lips as he tried not to laugh at his reaction. "You're joking?"

"Yeah," Jon snorted. "It's a long story and I have a job to do, so perhaps I could tell you all about it another time..."

"Sure, sure, I don't want to keep you," Tormund babbled, before Jon's last words made it to his brain and _oh_ \- he hadn't dated since forever but could it be that he was really that slow on the uptake? "Oh, uh, I... Yeah. Uh, would you... maybe..."

"Yes," Jon said before Tormund could finish his painstakingly awkward process of asking him out, smiling at him, "I'd very much like to see you again. After all, someone should teach you to swim... or we could just go for a drink."

"Or both," Tormund added, trying to get his footing back, feeling like his two brain cells could barely connect while he stood near Jon, "I'd like that."

"Great," Jon answered, his smile brightening, looking actually relieved that Tormund had said yes, so perhaps he didn't feel as confident as he seemed to be on the outside. "Stick around for a little while and I'll give you my number, alright?"

"Perfect," Tormund said, though he wasn't only speaking about that plan, mesmerised as he was by the little creases of sudden elation around Jon's eyes.

The lifeguard blushed, stuttered a weak _see you later_ and jogged back to his colleague, who seemed to be teasing him as she jerked her head into Tormund's direction and elbowed Jon with a grin plastered on her face. Tormund observed the young man for a little while longer, smiling when he caught him looking right back. He was distracted when a wet hand patted his thigh.

"You made a new friend, daddy?" Ailin asked, looking up at him with wide and curious eyes, blue like his own.

"Maybe," Tormund whispered to her in confidence, before he took the sunglasses his daughter had slipped onto her hat and put them back on her nose. "Better like this, isn't it?"

She shrugged, turning her head toward the two lifeguards who were now serious again and watching the swimmers carefully.

"He's cute," Ailin said.

"You think so?" Tormund enquired, chuckling when she nodded fiercely. "He's also really nice and brave, you know?"

"Good," she decided, "You can keep him."

Tormund let out a bark of laughter, loud and unabashed, and he lifted his daughter to put a big kiss on her cheek before he settled her on his hip.

"You know what?" he told her, "I think I will."

  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much for reading this story, feel free to share your thoughts about it in the comments :)


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